I took ARH 206 at Stony Brook back in Fall 2019 with Prof. David Mather and it was the most impactful class I took in college. I specifically took the class because I thought modern art was bullshit. I’m very happy to say that the class completely changed my view of modern art – specifically seeing the interplay between various artistic movements, how they affected and were influenced by popular culture. I’m writing this from the perspective of an engineer and layperson who appreciates art, so Tweet at me if you disagree with anything. Note – I lump contemporary art in with modern art. My intention with this piece is to convince people that the weird shit in art galleries is pretty cool, not to debate the finer points.

I was always confused by modern art. I didn’t understand the point of it. Older art showed mastery of technical skills, as well as beauty that everybody could appreciate. When you look at the work of the Old Masters, you can clearly see the years of effort and work it took to create such incredibly intricate work. Modern art was always a little weird and pretentious, besides it looked like a 5 year old could make it. I could display a canvas painted white with a black square in the middle myself and nobody would give a shit, so is modern art just marketing? If you take a step back, you notice what I value in art — beauty, technical skill, effort. Now this brings up the question of what exactly is art.

Between you and me, I don’t think anyone knows exactly what art is and anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit. Let’s rip off Wikipedia –

Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author’s imaginative, conceptual ideas, or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power.

This sounds pretty legit to me since it’s a wide open definition and it definitely covers the most important bases. Under this definition I wouldn’t hesitate to label Malevich’s Black Square art. Long story short Malevich wanted to make a painting that wasn’t “of” something. He didn’t want to show the beauty of some thing, he wanted to be completely original and show the beauty of an ideal shape. Now this definitely satisfies the criterion of being imaginative, though a little weak on the technical skill part. Is a square beautiful though? For example look at Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie. It’s a collection of squares and it’s got colors so it’s not that far off. Is it considered beautiful? Follow up question – do you believe pictures of the New York City grid is beautiful? My point here is that incredible technical skill is not a prerequisite for having beautiful artwork. Another angle to look at this is how nature can be beautiful. A flower is beautiful not because of the incredible technical skill of it’s DNA. It just is beautiful because you like it.

So modern art is in fact art. Cool but what caused that change from making such “beautiful” works like David to throwing a dead shark in some preservative? I’ve heard that it accelerated with the introduction of the camera. Art could no longer just recreate reality, it needed to innovate and differentiate itself. What became important was the artist’s subjective interpretation of a feeling, moment or idea.

I can’t speak to why you should give a shit about modern art. This brings up the question of why you should give a shit about art at all, but that’s for another time. For me, I always felt like I was missing something important. You’d see people reading deeply into a few squiggles on a canvas and I’d wonder what they’d been smoking. Modern art always had the trappings of legitimacy but it was tough to take it seriously. Once I’d learned a little more about modern art I realized how really it runs parallel to pop culture today, which is at least one way it makes a difference in your life.

Drake’s Hotline Bling was definitely a pop culture moment. I only learned later his music video totally cribbed the work of James Turrell. I’m a pretty big fan of Turrell’s. His most famous works are his Skyspaces, which are small buildings with open skylights. They’re illuminated on the inside with color changing LED’s which contrast with the color of the sky. I think this is a super cool idea which really gets you to focus on the color of the sun where otherwise you wouldn’t.

The art you enjoy every day is influence by modern art. Team Fortress 2 impressed me with it’s creative art style that was incredibly unique even today. Turns out it was influenced by the Precisionists.

Another artist that I discounted was Andy Warhol. In particular I thought copy-pasting the Campbell’s soup can wasn’t really that big a deal. One way of looking at his work is that he was the first to bring an appreciation to the artistic value of advertising and marketing. He bonded high art with the artwork the average person was most likely to come into contact with. This was a remarkably egalitarian view of artwork. I personally don’t think his work is “beautiful” but this relates to the Slate Star Codex post on reading things backwards . Imagine what a sea change it was when Warhol showed that advertising could be artistic.

Cut Piece was a piece by Yoko Ono which I was surprised I appreciated. I didn’t think much of performance art previously, but this was something that was really out there. Ono sat on stage silently while the audience could cut her clothing away. It forced the concept of audience interacting with artist to be explicit. It defined the relationship as potentially destructive and aggressive.

Duchamp’s Fountain was also a work that I would have sneered at but grew to appreciate. My opinion can be summarized by the following quotations from Louise Norton.

“Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.”

And

“The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.”

The point of this is that maybe you don’t dislike modern art, you might just dislike certain kinds of it. Keep an open mind and explore some different kinds of modern art.